15. My Grandmother’s Recipes Are a Suggestion, Not Law
My Grandmother's Recipes Are a Suggestion, Not Law
Chapter Fifteen
The flour incident happened on a Wednesday.
I came home to find the kitchen looking like it had experienced a weather event, Vera at the epicenter in a mixing-bowl standoff, covered in white from the wrist up and in a determined expression that indicated she had been at this for some time and was not interested in my feedback.
"Don't," she said, before I could speak.
"I wasn't—"
"You were about to say something about the mess."
"I was about to say hello."
She turned to look at me. Flour on her nose. Flour in her eyebrows. Flour on the cabinet behind her in a pattern that suggested an incident.
"Hello," she said. "I'm making your grandmother's biscuit recipe. It's going badly."
My heart did the thing it did sometimes, without warning, where it just expanded past its normal capacity.
She'd remembered. A throwaway mention of my grandmother's biscuits a week ago over a late dinner, and she'd remembered it and written it down and found the recipe and was currently covered in flour in our kitchen attempting to make it.
"Where did you get the recipe?" I asked, curious.
"I messaged your great aunt Helena on Facebook."
My mouth fell open. "Aunt Helena has a Facebook?"
"Everybody has a Facebook."
I lifted a brow. "I don't."
Vera wiped her hands on her apron. "Well, you're special."
I like how she said that. Special, instead of weird.
"Come here," I said.
"I have it under control."
"Vera. You have flour on your forehead."
"That's just a minor inconvenience. It can be cleaned." But she stepped aside, because she trusted me in kitchens now the way I trusted her in libraries, and we stood side by side at the counter with our hands in the dough.
"Less water," I said. "My grandmother always said less water than you think."
"I added the full amount."
"That's the mistake."
"The recipe says—"
"My grandmother's recipes are a suggestion, not law. She always used less." I guided her hands through the motions. "Feel it. It should be just barely sticky."
"Is this what it felt like? When she taught you?"
I thought about my Portuguese grandmother's kitchen. The distinct smell of it. Her hands over mine, the same way mine were over Vera's now. "Yeah," I said. "Pretty much exactly."
Vera went quiet for a moment, her hands working the dough. "Thank you for teaching me," she said finally.
"Thank you for wanting to learn."
The biscuits came out perfect. Golden and tall and exactly right, the way I remembered. Vera looked at them with an expression of such genuine triumph that I had to press my mouth against her flour-covered hair to keep from saying something embarrassing.
"We did it," she said.
"You did it. I supervised."
"We're a team." She turned in my arms, not caring about the flour on both of us. "Everything's better when we do it together, you know."
I kissed her. She tasted like butter and flour and an ordinary Wednesday evening, which was, I was discovering, the best possible thing to taste like.
The next day at the station, Rodriguez found me checking rappel lines in the equipment bay and leaned against Engine 19 with the questionable, suspicious posture of a man who had something to say.
"You seem different," he said.
"Different how."
"Relaxed. Present." He studied me. "Living with the librarian agrees with you."
"We make it work," I said, which was the understatement of my current life.
"Good. Fire season's coming. Driest spring in a decade. You've never seen it this bad in San Jacinto, but I have. I need everyone sharp."
"I'm always sharp, Cap."
"I know you are." He pushed off the engine. "I just need to make sure more happy doesn't become less sharp."
"It won't."
He nodded and walked away, and Jackson materialized approximately four seconds later from behind Engine 19 in a way that strongly suggested he had been there the whole time.
"Were you listening to that conversation?" I asked.
"I was performing maintenance in the vicinity of a conversation," he said. "Different thing."
"Jackson."
"He's wrong, for the record." He fell into step beside me. "You're not softer. You're—" He thought about it. "You're more you. Like you finally have a reason to be all the way here instead of just most of the way here."
I looked at him. Jackson, who had talked me out of doing something catastrophically stupid after the Painted Rock fire two seasons ago by simply sitting next to me in the parking lot for forty-five minutes without saying anything.
Jackson, who knew when to talk and when not to, which was rarer than it sounded.
"She made my grandmother's biscuits last night," I said. "Because it was something I mentioned once offhand, like a week ago."
Jackson was quiet for a moment. "Yeah," he said. "That's the thing, isn't it?"
"What thing?"
"The thing that makes you more careful up there.
" He nodded toward the helipad, toward the Bell 212 gleaming in the morning sun.
"Back when you didn't have much to come home to, you didn't think about coming home as much.
Now you do." He glanced at me sideways. "That's not a weakness, Petra. That's a reason."
I thought about Vera on Sunday mornings. About biscuits and flour-covered kitchens and a woman who put books on my boots as an act of love.
"Yeah," I said. "It is."
Stevens appeared from around the corner of the equipment bay. "Are you guys having a moment? Because I can come back. I just wanted to tell Alves that Vera texted me the brown butter variation for chocolate chip and it's—" He stopped, reading the atmosphere. "Is this a moment?"
"We're done," Jackson said.
"Great." Stevens looked at me with bright, uncomplicated sincerity. "Vera is the best person you've ever dated, and we're all really glad she exists."
"Stevens—"
"I'm just saying what everyone's thinking.
" He held up his phone. "Also, she sent a text that says Brandon, the secret is to brown the butter until it smells nutty but not burnt, and you should trust yourself.
And I just want you to know that personally, that really—" He stopped. "It really got me. A little bit."
I stared at him.
"I'm fine," he said. "I'm completely fine."
"He's not fine," Jackson said.
"I'm fine." Stevens pocketed his phone and straightened his shoulders. "Back to work."
He walked away with considerable dignity on his expression. I watched him go and thought about the woman at home in our apartment who sent personalized encouragement to my rookie firefighter about cookie technique.
"She's something else," Jackson said, not for the first time.
"She's everything," I said, and meant it the same way I'd meant it to Amber at the bakery, and would mean it every time I said it for the rest of my life.
That night, after dinner and the biscuits and a shower we both needed, Vera curled against my side in our bed with her hand over Lucas and Santi's initials, the way she always did.
"Jackson's right," she said. "About the domestication."
"I know."
"It's wonderful." She tilted her face up. "You're still you. Terrifying when necessary. Completely capable of carrying things that should require two people. Deeply wrong about folding towels."
"I'm not wrong about the towels, I have a method—"
"My method is also a method. It's just a different method."
"Your method is decorative."
"Functionality and aesthetics are not mutually exclusive, Petra."
"The towels are for drying. They don't need to be attractive."
"Everything benefits from intention," she said. "Even towels."
I looked at her. This woman who had appeared in a hallway and upended everything I thought I knew about what I needed, what I wanted, what home felt like.
"You're going to win the towel thing," I said.
"I'm already winning the towel thing."
"I know." I pulled her closer. "I let you."
She made an outraged sound. "You—"
"I let you win it the second time. The first time I genuinely forgot which fold was mine."
She hit my shoulder gently. I laughed. She laughed. Outside, the desert was dark and vast and ancient, the way it always was.
"Lucas and Santi would have liked you," I said, after a while.
She stilled, then pressed her lips to the tattoo. "Tell me something about them. Something good."
I thought about it. "Johnson could not drive. Couldn't parallel park to save his life. We'd been in a combat zone for seven months, and he still drove like he'd just gotten his permit. We used to argue about who had to be in the vehicle with him."
Vera laughed softly. "And Santi?"
"Ramirez could cook. Better than me, actually. He'd find ingredients in places that shouldn't have had ingredients and make something out of nothing." I paused. "He would have loved meeting you. He loved people who could do things with their hands. He would have asked you about the sewing."
"I wish I'd gotten to tell him about it."
"Me too." I kissed her forehead. "Go to sleep."
"One more question."
"Vera."
"Who's right about the towels. Final answer. In your heart."
I closed my eyes. Outside, somewhere in the dark desert, something moved through the scrubland, going wherever it needed to go.
"Neither of us," I said. "Stevens clearly doesn't fold his at all. His are just in a pile. I saw it at the station. That's the real enemy."
She laughed warmly against my chest, and settled.
"Goodnight, Petra."
"Goodnight, baby."
She was asleep in minutes, the way she always was, and I lay awake a little longer with my hand in her hair and the desert dark outside the window, and the knowledge that Jackson was right.
This wasn't soft. This was the thing that made everything else possible.
This was my greatest strength.